Label printing technology

In general, printing technologies can be divided into two groups: digital and conventional. Although there are many variations within the two groups, we will restrict our presentation on the most commonly used technologies in the field of label production: laser or inkjet (digital) printing and flexographic (conventional) printing. Each of them has its own specific characteristics, which is why it is helpful to know at least some of the basics. Each of them employs roll-to-roll processing, meaning, that the produced labels are also wound on a roll.

Each of the label printing technologies has its limitations. For optimal results, it is often best to combine them. LabelProfi offers you the best of both worlds.

Digital label printing

Although this printing technology has been around for more than 30 years, it was as late as about a decade ago, when digital printing was able to successfully compete with conventional technologies in terms of quality. However, recent digital technologies even manage to substantially outdo conventional printing.

Key advantages of digital printing include speed, flexibility and low prepress costs, since it doesn't require expensive plates and takes up far less time to finalize the files. The latter is especially useful when printing variable data (numbering, bar- or QR codes, content variations, etc.).

We mustn’t leave out the environmental impact of label production. Our printing technologies use 100 % eco-friendly inks, which is evident from their environmental certificates.

Digital printing is used in cases, where the following is required:

supreme printing quality

flexibility of production (frequent design changes)

various designs within one label size (possibility of cost reduction through quantitative pooling)

variable data printing

high responsiveness - fast deliveries

small or medium runs of different types of labels

sample runs for later large-scale production

eco-friendly label production

Conventional label printing

The far most popular conventional technology in the field of label production is flexographic printing. It requires plates to transfer ink to substrate. At the beginning, this technology was considered to be inferior in terms of quality, but simple. In the last few years, the field of flexographic printing has seen some significant qualitative changes, which, apart from its simplicity, have made it so widespread among label manufacturers. Despite higher initial costs (plates, prepress) flexographic printing is cost efficient in large runs, since it requires significantly cheaper inks and higher production speeds.

Flexographic printing is used in cases, where the following is required: